A Pantoum...Spring Fever

 Poetic Bloomings asks us to try a Pantoum

The PANTOUM consists of a series of quatrains rhyming ABAB, in which the second and fourth lines of a quatrain recur as the first and third line in the succeeding quatrain; each quatrain introduces a new second rhyme as BCBC, CDCD… In the last quatrain, the two unused lines from the opening quatrain are used to fill in the last stanza, with the first line of the poem becomes the last line of the poem (ZAZA). Walt’s example illustrates this traditional form of PANTOUM.

(This sounds just challenging enough to be alluring)

I’ve come down with a sudden fever

Aroused by breezes tumbling through the screen

And I’ve become an old, renewed believer

In words like violet, indigo and green

Aroused by breezes tumbling through the screen

Passion stirs a yearning wanderlust

As words like violet, indigo and green

Draw me to pastures rich with rain-drenched dust

Passion stirs a yearning wanderlust

A longing to return, I know not whence

So I choose pastures, rich with rain-drenched dust

Wiggle like a child, beneath its fence

A longing to return, I know not whence

But Father Time does not restore the past

As now a woman squirms beneath the fence

Content to revel in its shadow cast

Father  Time does not restore the past

So, I’ve become an old, renewed believer

Content to revel in its shadow cast

Oh, I’ve come down with a sudden fever…

© Janet Martin